


Seeing Stars in Manhattan

by heavenscalyx (Jude)



Series: I Won't Treat You Like You're Typical [2]
Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Exhibitionism, F/F, Shameless Smut, hints of kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-08-13 01:30:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7956895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jude/pseuds/heavenscalyx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After averting the apocalypse, Patty and Holtzmann retire back to the HQ to put Erin and Abby to bed, and do a little cleanup and celebrating.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seeing Stars in Manhattan

Patty and Holtzmann dragged Abby and Erin away from the police and Feds who wanted a complete debriefing right then, just after they'd come back from the portal, white-haired and giddy with victory. Patty managed to find a cab willing to take them back to the headquarters over the Chinese restaurant before everyone's adrenaline from saving the world crashed like a sugar-high five-year-old.

It had been a long damn day.

Abby and Erin stayed upright just long enough to stuff Chinese food into their faces, and then Patty and Holtzmann poured them into the narrow just-in-case cots in the back former-storage rooms, and retired to the main room, where someone — possibly Benny — had boarded up the window (again) and even swept up the glass.

"They were really out of it," Patty said. She picked up her soda and held it with both hands because the cold felt so damn good on the cable burns on her palms.

"I think semi-crossing-over or whatever they did in that portal may've damaged the electromagnetic fields of their bodies," Holtzmann said, finishing her pile of kung pao chicken. "Their bodies need some time to reestablish their regular fields."

Patty eyed her. "I actually understood you that time. Was that on purpose or am I just catching onto Holtzy-code?"

Holtzmann's face broke into a sunbeam grin and she winked. Then she looked down at Patty's hands, wrapped around the condensation-covered cup and her face fell into a thoughtful expression. "I couldn't have gotten them out without you."

"I couldn't've gotten them out without _you_ ," Patty said, smiling down at the engineer. "That's what this whole teamwork thing's about."

"You tore up your hands on that cable," Holtzmann says, not even a question.

"Ripped right through those gloves," Patty said, holding out her left hand, displaying the dark, abraded burn lines across her palm. "There was some serious pull from the beyond."

"Yeah, me too," Holtzmann said, showing her own battlescars, which weren't as serious as Patty's, since Patty had been anchoring the cable while Holtzmann hauled at the front. "You want some of my antibiotic stuff with painkiller?"

"Oh, hell, yes," Patty said, actually drinking from her soda before setting it down.

Holtzmann pulled a well-flattened, grubby, greasy yellow tube out of one of her pockets, spun the cap off, squeezed out some ointment, holding it out to apply to Patty's hands. Patty obediently held out both her hands and Holtzmann deposited a sizeable bead on each. But before Patty could rub her hands together or otherwise spread it around, Holtzmann took her right hand — the worse one — and started delicately spreading the salve over the stripes. She applied it quickly and deftly, and then took Patty's left hand and repeated the process.

Patty wasn't sure whether it was the pain relief from the lidocaine or Holtzmann's careful attention that was giving her the warm feeling somewhere in her chest. Holtzmann's hands were small and slender compared to Patty's big ones, and perfectly gentle.

"There you go," Holtzmann said, dabbing the last injury, and looking up into Patty's face. She didn't let go of Patty's hands, stroking the backs of them with her fingertips.

"Thank you," Patty said, not pulling her hands away. Holtzmann's gaze was riveting and intense. There was a moment when Patty thought she might say something… 

But then Holtzmann let go and turned away to start cleaning up the takeout containers. "Are you going to head home?"

Patty sighed and picked up the utensils to rinse them and put them in the dishwasher. "I don't have the stamina to stay upright on the train to Bed-Stuy, much less walk to my apartment. You?"

"I'm staying here," Holtzmann said, waiting at Patty's elbow to wash the containers in the sink.

"Right, you've got that haul up to Inwood, right?"

"Yeah. Aaaaaand I think maybe someone should keep an eye on our two pioneers of the Great Beyond." Holtzmann shrugged and grinned. "Bring them coffee whenever they wake up in the morning."

"Yeah. Good idea." 

They finished cleaning up, and took the trash and recycling out for extra points.

Out in the alley, Patty looked up at the cloudless, naturally-darkening sky and said, "Why do you think their hair turned white?"

Holtzmann hmmed and said, "Well, there are lasers that can destroy melanocytes in the hair follicles. I knew someone who was a grad student helping with those experiments. But that just makes the hair grow _in_ white. Something in the radiation that bleached out the melanin in their hair and _also_ stripped the chemical alteration from Erin's hair dye? That's research we're going to have to do."

"Are you sayin' that if I'd fallen into that portal, I'd've come out _white_?" Patty said. "Because I don't need another reason to not fall into a portal like that, but it surely is a _damned_ good reason."

Holtzmann looked horrified, and then intrigued as she thought it through. In the end, though, she shook her head. "Maaaaaaaaybe Erin and Abby shouldn't go out in the sun for a little while until we figure out what happened to their hair. If the portal permanently knocked out their melanin production, that sort of thing."

"When I stop by the drug store tomorrow, I'll pick up some SPF 10,000 for 'em," Patty said, turning to go back inside.

"Patty," Holtzmann said hesitantly. When Patty looked at her, Holtzmann cleared her throat uncomfortably. "You… um… performed life-saving actions today. Multiple life-saving actions. For me. And I… well, thank you."

Patty watched the engineer for a moment, then dropped an arm around her shoulders (gently) and herded her inside. "I feel like a truck ran over me, and I didn't get dropped out a window. How's your neck?"

"It's great," Holtzmann said cheerfully, climbing the stairs. "Exactly the traction I needed to work out this one muscle spasm I've had off and on for weeks"

"Yeah, I feel the same way about my shoulders," Patty said, playing along. "Needed a good solid stretch."

"I think I need to add more padding between the proton pack and the back," Holtzmann said with a frown, wiggling her shoulders experimentally.

"I told you that after the concert bust," Patty said, as they stopped and looked over the big room. "Though I noticed that you added some for me, and I thank you for that. Made falling on my back today to avoid flying weapons _much_ more comfortable. Like fallin' onto a pillowtop mattress."

Holtzmann snorted a laugh. "Normally about now I'd turn on music and try to fix the damage to the packs, but muscles I didn't even know I had hurt."

"I suppose if that's all we got from the apocalypse, we're good," Patty said. "Speaking of mattresses, Abby and Erin aren't the only ones tired."

Holtzmann grinned up at her. "Are you inviting me to go to bed with you, Ms. Tolan?"

Patty rolled her eyes. "Because preventing apocalypses always turns me on so much."

"If it floats your boat…"

"It floats yours?"

Holtzmann gave her a mercurial, fox-like smile that transformed her face. Patty had seen that look before, usually aimed at discomfiting Erin, but having it turned on her made bedtime with Holtzmann seem like an even better idea. _How does she do that? How does she turn on this supernatural damn charm?_

They both retired to the former kitchen, where there were a couple more narrow single beds with rock-hard cheap mattresses and curtains strung on ropes for semi-privacy, since there were only so many storage rooms. Patty dug in her makeshift locker for the pajama shorts and long baseball shirt she kept there for sleeping, and went into the bathroom to scrape off her makeup. The sweating from the running and fighting and hauling had pretty much ruined everything, and had left it a greasy mess. Somehow Holtzmann's eyeliner, minimal as it was, had stayed pristine. _Next time, I'm just gettin' a bandanna and going full Rambo out there. Next time? I hope there isn't a next apocalypse!_

When she emerged, Holtzmann had shoved the two single beds together up against the wall and was doing something underneath the beds. "Holtzy?" Patty said, staring at the California-king-in-the-making.

Holtzmann slid out from underneath, wearing cotton gym shorts and a long Star Wars: The Force Awakens t-shirt. "Just making sure no one falls into the crack," she said, and then threw herself onto one of the mattresses. She failed to bounce, winced, and laid there for a long moment, staring at the ceiling. "Note to self: Flopping onto a mattress made of woodchips and pumice is a suboptimal choice."

Patty thought through the many things that popped into her head to say, and settled on, "You're seriously feeling like company then?"

Holtzmann pulled off her yellow-lensed goggles and looked up at her innocently. "You said it first. But if you'd rather not have more room to sprawl over, I'll go get my blowtorch and separate the beds."

" _Blowtorch?_ "

"It's the easiest way to get the bolts off."

"Forget it. I am _not_ sleeping in fire extinguisher powder." Patty sat on the edge of the outside bed, and then stretched out on it. "Ohhh, man, it feels good to lie down. How many blocks did we run anyway?"

" From Chinatown to Times Square is fifty or so, I think," Holtzmann said with a yawn, dropping the goggles over the side of the bed. "Three miles, according to my step counter."

"You use a step counter?"

"Not usually, but I just turned on 'Zombies, Run!' on my phone when we started after the car."

"Is that why you had your earbuds in for a while?"

"Oh, yeah, it's always better to run with a soundtrack."

"Is that why you have music going in the lab all the time?"

"Yep. Life is better with a soundtrack."

"Huh. Well, I can't deny that, though it'd be hard for this crew to come to a consensus on music types, I think."

"Abby and I mostly agree. Though she has a secret passion for 1980s New Age music. I found the vinyl at her apartment."

"Just because you bought something on vinyl in the 1980s doesn't mean you like it now. I did a lot of things in the 1980s that when I think about them now, I wonder what I was thinking."

"She's got a New Age Spotify playlist. Says it's 'research'."

"... Huh. Well, all right then."

They stared up into the fluorescent lights, and Holtzmann raised her arms and clapped twice. The lights went out.

"You hooked up our lights to a _Clapper_?" Patty said.

"The height of engineering genius."

"What does it do when you blow something up?"

"I only rarely have double explosions that could challenge the Clapper, but I've modified this one to reduce the risk of lights-out."

"Of course you have."

They stared into the darkness for a while, and finally Holtzmann said, "What kinds of things did you do in the 80s that you wonder about now?"

"Oh, bullshit things," Patty said, rolling onto her side to face Holtzmann. She pulled up the sheet against the spring chill. "Getting into fights sometimes. Some of the people I dated. Going to graduate school."

"What'd you go to grad school for? History?"

"Aw, hell no, historians make no money. I went for biochemistry."

"You're a biochemist?"

"Not for a long time, baby."

"What happened?"

"They threw my ass out, what do you think?"

Patty's eyes had adjusted to the ambient city light in the room enough to see Holtzmann's face relatively clearly. She looked outraged and concerned. "But why?"

"Do you think anyone was gonna give a PhD in a science to someone who looks like me? In the 1980s?" Patty said in the tone of voice she generally reserved for white people who hadn't really thought through racism before. She didn't add, _Or even now?_

Holtzmann chewed on that for a while, almost literally. Patty could see the fine line of her jaw moving with muscles clenching and releasing. "You didn't try another school?"

Patty laughed, and congratulated herself that it almost didn't sound bitter any more. "I was tired of being poor and not having a life. I got a job at the MTA. It paid the bills, you know? Health insurance, union wage, free time, who'd give that up to go back to school and living on ramen?"

"You gave it up to join us."

Patty looked away from her. "That's different. You all are _crazy_. Maybe I just needed some crazy in my life." _Maybe I needed people who I could talk to in that zip code I hadn't visited in a while._

"What got you into history?"

"I started doing my family tree as a present for an auntie, and when I was tracking back my father's side of the family, I found family that had lived in Oklahoma, in towns that don't exist any more. From there I found that there were all-black towns in Oklahoma, some founded while it was Indian Territory, some during the land rush of 1889, and I just started reading about them. That got me reading more about New York City and its history, and especially the bullshit colonists pulled, and here we are."

"Wow."

"How did you get into physics and engineering?"

"The normal way? Nothing as interesting as your story. I started wanting to know how things went together pretty early, so I took things apart. My parents told me that if I was going to take things apart, I needed to learn to build things to balance it out. My grandfather taught me how to fix cars, so I worked at a garage to get myself through college. I won a fellowship to grad school in particle physics. I worked for the government for a while after grad school. It's really pretty dull."

"Baby, _nothing_ about you is dull."

Holtzmann leaned up on her elbow to look down at Patty. "You think so? Or maybe I'm just _pretending_ to be interesting."

"Nope, pretty sure you _are_ interesting."

"You're interested in me?" Holtzmann gave her a mockingly flirtatious look, complete with eyebrow waggle.

Patty was tired, and as fond as she was of Holtzmann, wasn't in the mood to play games. "You've been flirting your ass off at Erin all this time. Are you just doing this because she's dead to the world?"

"I can't flirt with more than one woman at a time?"

"Not when I'm the woman being flirted at and I'm this bone-tired."

Holtzmann's face went serious. "Hey, I'll stop, I'm sorry."

Patty reached out and pulled her into a hug. "It's okay. I know you don't mean anything."

Holtzmann was stiff for a moment in the embrace, and then relaxed, sliding an arm over Patty and burrowing her face into the space below Patty's chin. A little muffled, she said, "But I do mean something. I don't flirt just for fun usually."

Patty settled herself more comfortably. The engineer felt like a small, very warm cat nestled against her. "You're seriously into me?"

Holtzmann exhaled hot breath on Patty's throat in a snort of exasperation. " _Yes_."

Patty's fingertips were gently rubbing along Holtzmann's spine, tracing the line of vertebrae while trying to avoid pressing too hard on fresh bruises. _Normally, I'm more into big brawny studs, female or male, the sort of person I don't feel like I could accidentally break in half. But I just watched this tiny slip of a thing take on a mob of ghosts and help me drag our friends back out of that portal to who-knows-where._ She'd also watched those wiry muscles strain as Holtzmann prized open the metal chassis of a proton pack or hauled on something in the depths of the car engine.

Her hand drifted up to the back of the engineer's neck, grazing the skin there, and Holtzmann hummed into the baseball shirt.

Patty said, "Come up here and kiss me if you're serious."

Holtzmann didn't hesitate a second, and also didn't relinquish a centimeter of skin contact as she nuzzled her way up along Patty's neck and jawline to her lips.

Both of them were clutching at each other and panting into each other's mouths almost immediately. Holtzmann breathed a tiny moan that made Patty's pulse pound in her ears. It dragged a growl from Patty's throat that made Holtz shiver. The engineer seemed to be trying to press herself close enough to occupy the same space as Patty, but that being impossible, they ended up with their legs intertwined, thighs pressing just where they needed to be. Holtz pushed Patty onto her back and climbed on top of her, using gravity to both their advantages.

It was perhaps possible that saving the world _was_ a turn-on for Patty. She was fairly sure that her own shorts were nearly as wet-through as Holtzmann's were, and though the fabric was providing some nice friction, she thought the engineer's skin would do even better. She pulled up the edge of Holtzmann's t-shirt, and Holtzmann dragged at her baseball shirt, and then they parted just long enough to peel off their shirts and shorts.

Holtzmann was rolled away from Patty, tossing her clothes after her goggles, when Patty got impatient and swept her up in her arms, pulling her back against her and closing her hands over the engineer's small but enormously satisfying breasts. Holtzmann squeaked and wriggled as Patty caught her nipples in the creases of her palms and squeezed them while also kneading the soft flesh behind them.

"You just can't stay still, can you?" Patty rumbled in her ear, and let her fingers slide out to tug and roll the hard tips.

"No," Holtz gasped when Patty tugged. "You make me want to move, anything to get your hands on me, all over me. I can't stop myself, I just want you too much." The engineer's ass pushed back against Patty, and she threw her head to one side, then the other. Her hands clawed at the sheets. Her thrashing increased as Patty just kept working her breasts.

"What do you want, Holtzy?" Patty said softly, pulling both nipples outward with slow, inexorable force.

"Ahhh... please!" Holtz said incoherently.

"That doesn't tell me anything," Patty teased. She let one hand stray down over Holtzmann's belly to the dripping-wet curls between her legs. "Ohhhh, I see," she said, mock-surprised.

Holtzmann made small, frustrated noises, pushing her hips forward to encourage Patty's fingers deeper. "Come on and fuck me!"

Patty wrapped one arm around her to hold her still(er), and plunged the other hand between her legs. Holtz cried out.

"So loud," Patty said, tsking in Holtz's ear, as her fingers easily parted Holtz's slick labia and found her swollen clit. "It's a good thing Abby and Erin are asleep, isn't it?"

Holtz bit her lower lip, but as soon as Patty started stroking up her clit, lighting up the nerve endings there, she let out a groan. Her hips jumped a few times until Patty found just the right pressure.

"You want them to hear you, don't you?" Patty said, chuckling. 

Holtz gasped, "Oh, hell, yes."

"You little exhibitionist." Patty didn't say, _I want them to hear you too. I want one of them to come watch this show._ "What else do you want, Holtzy?"

"Please," Holtz said, and moaned when Patty's fingers slid back to sweep more wetness forward to her clit. "Please fuck me, Patty, please."

Patty rolled onto her back again, pulling Holtzmann backwards on top of her and up so that Holtz's blonde head was next to her own. "Like this, just in case one of them comes to look, oh yes, that would be a nice view, wouldn't it? I want to see that view. I need to fuck you somewhere with mirrors and more light." Patty pushed one finger into frictionless silken heat, and added a second one just to provide a little pressure. Holtz let out a guttural moan that sent lightning bolts into Patty's clit, and writhed, bucking her hips up, bracing her feet on the bed on either side of Patty's legs. Patty's restraining arm tightened and Holtz let her head fall back, jaw slack, breath harsh in Patty's ear, hips still moving helplessly.

Patty fucked her with long, regular thrusts, pushing deeper until one fingertip brushed the knot of Holtz's cervix, drawing another little moan from the engineer. Then she curled her fingers against the soft place behind Holtz's pubic bone, and stroked, which caused Holtz's hips to jump harder and faster.

"Patty, please make me come," Holtz whispered, trying to look at Patty, though her eyes kept fluttering shut with each stroke.

"Are you going to come hard for me, Holtzy? Real hard? And long?" Patty said, not changing her rhythm at all.

"Whatever you want," Holtz said, eyes closed. "Whatever you want, please, please, just make me come, I want to come for you, keep holding me down and fucking me and making me come, Patty."

"Whatever I want?" Patty said, and bit Holtz's earlobe. "That's a big promise, Holtzy. I want you to come so hard you see stars in Manhattan, baby. I want you to shake the earth. I want..." Patty sped the motion of her fingers. "I want to hold you while you come and feel it in my own body, Holtzy, can you do that for me?"

Holtzmann's hips rocked high and froze there, her whole body straining up against Patty's tight hold, looking down at herself in the darkness. She broke after several heartbeats of transfixion and said, despairingly, "Oh my god," before throwing her head back against Patty's shoulder, arching harder, and releasing a hoarse, shuddering exhalation, her legs trembling alongside Patty's, quaking Patty's belly and crotch and thighs so vigorously that Patty shouted in surprise as a rolling orgasm shook her just from the friction and vibration and sound and feel.

In the aftermath of their simultaneous devastation, they lay quietly panting, Patty still inside Holtz, and the fading spasms of Holtz's muscles gave her little spasms of her own, her cunt grasping for something that wasn't there. Holtzmann lazily turned her head and kissed Patty's ear, and Patty rolled them sideways, keeping her fingers where they were but letting Holtz slide onto the bed on her back, the better to kiss her.

After a long, slow, all-encompassing kiss, Patty kissed Holtzmann's nose and said, "How you feeling?"

"Very... relaxed," Holtz said.

"Too relaxed to give me some joy?" Patty said.

"Not a chance," Holtz said with a grin. "What do you want?"

"What do you want to do to me?"

"Fuck you, lick you, everything and anything." Holtzmann kissed her again. "Try me."

"I want your busy mouth busy with something else," Patty said, and she stretched her fingers inside Holtz, eliciting a whimper. "And I'll just keep fucking you while you do it, I think."

"Oh, god, yes, please," Holtz said, licking her lips.

They had a brief spell of Patty's fingers slipping out of Holtz while Holtz was rearranging (Holtz whimpered sadly, which just made warmth flood between Patty's legs), but finally Holtz was on her hands and knees over Patty, Patty's fingers back inside her, and she was sliding an inquiring finger into Patty.

Patty said, "Oh, that's nice. Do that some more."

Holtzmann fucked her slowly for a while, Patty matching her motions. "I've got a nice view up here, Holtzy." Holtzmann's cunt stretched around Patty's fingers was, even in the dimness of their makeshift bedroom, lovely, and so was her ass and her thighs spread around Patty's broad chest. Holtzmann smelled rich and savory and a little musky, and Patty promised herself a taste when Holtzmann wasn't...

Holtz's tongue slid into Patty's folds right then and blotted out thought for a while. Patty could hear herself sloshing as Holtz fucked her and flicked her tongue all over and around her clit. Her fingers curled inside Holtzmann and she started fucking her faster, able to get her whole arm behind the motion now, fucking her hard enough that Holtz's whole body rocked with it. Holtz's mouth closed over Patty's clit and sucked and licked, and Holtz moaned as Patty wrenched another orgasm out of her, her thighs juddering so hard she slid into a collapse on Patty's belly and chest, legs splayed wide, wetness gleaming all down their insides. Holtz didn't stop what she was doing, though, and Patty fucked her harder and faster as her own climax loomed closer and closer and suddenly overswept her, tsunami-like, her hand jammed tight into Holtzmann's convulsing cunt as Patty exclaimed incoherently and religiously into a star-filled darkness.

Patty came back to herself a minute or so later, vaguely guilty about their noise and her hand and shoulder starting to complain about the activity and position. (Not to mention how much her back and other muscles hurt, but she wasn't paying attention to those right now.) Holtz was whimpering softly between her legs. She gently withdrew her hand, soaking wet to the wrist, drawing a noise of complaint from Holtzmann, and let her arm drop to the mattress.

"You gonna come back up here?" Patty rasped after a moment's basking.

Holtzmann shook her head and said, muffled, "I wanna sleep down here."

"You are ridiculous. Hot, but ridiculous."

"Yep."

"You can't sleep down there."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm going to want a sheet and maybe a blanket when I cool down. It's chilly in here."

"That's fine."

Exasperated, Patty took hold of Holtz's hips and dragged her backwards. Holtz started to complain but stopped with a squeak when Patty ran her tongue over her clit. Holtzmann was salty enough to sting her mouth — probably because they'd been sweating so hard out there — and tasted exactly as good as Patty had thought she might. Now that she'd noticed the sweat, though, Patty's hand started to sting a bit too where the cable burns were not appreciating the exposure. _Fuck it, I'll live with it,_ Patty thought, and pressed her lips around Holtz's clit, slowly circling it with her tongue.

She'd planned a long, slow taste, but Holtz came again almost immediately, arching up with a full-throated scream, and her hips twitched hard when Patty slid her tongue back under the clit hood.

"Please wait wait oh god don't stop no not..." And Holtz came again, screaming into Patty's thigh.

Patty gripped Holtz's hips and tried again, delighted with her discovery of Holtz's multiple orgasms and Holtz's desperate begging between each. "I'm too sensitive I can't please, Patty, please right there no oh god don't stop please..."

She lost track of the number of times she managed to make Holtz scream like that, and she only stopped because Holtz sounded like she was weeping and her begging sounded more earnest. Patty gently and inexorably pulled the limp engineer around so they could face each other again and wrapped her arms around her so she could murmur comfort into her ear. "You're so good, baby, such a good girl, coming for Patty like that, yes, that was amazing and I just want to do it to you again and again..."

Holtzmann buried her face in Patty's shoulder and allowed herself to be petted and calmed, like an overwrought horse.

Patty was just drifting off when she heard the soft click of one of the nearby doors. She came awake completely, and felt Holtzmann come alert too. They lay there together, sweat cooling on skin, listening to the silence.

"Well," Holtz whispered, "I think we got our wish."

"Who do you think it was?" Patty said as low as she could.

Holtz just shook her head, and looked up at Patty with wide blue eyes. "The practical part of me hopes it was Abby. But, you know..."

"You got a thing with Abby, right?"

Holtzmann nodded and said, sheepishly, "I should've made that, uh, clearer, shouldn't I?"

"Yeah, baby, but it's all good, it's fine. I expect you worked that shit out with Abby, because you are the least exclusive person I've ever met. We should talk about it more in the morning." Patty paused, then added, "But most of you hopes it was Erin, don't you?"

Holtzmann hid her face again.

Patty kissed her ear and said into it, "We'll talk later about what kind of punishment you might need for that."

Holtz froze for a moment, then exhaled raggedly and nodded.

"Let's get some sleep. We can figure out who it was in the morning." Patty combed her fingers through the long hair that had come partly down. "You're gonna look a sight by then."

"The important part," Holtzmann said, "is to know what kind of sight you want to look like."

**Author's Note:**

> I know black women who got STEM PhDs in the 1980s and early 1990s, but I also know it was really damn hard to cope with the white old guard faculty who didn't want them to graduate, and I personally know some who were pushed out of a couple of departments. So, yes, Patty's tale is based on Real Life(TM).
> 
> Also, I am enough of a geek that I went looking for Tolan families in the early 20th century census records. I found a fascinating big Tolan family that had moved from Alabama to Oklahoma who were the majority of the residents for a small farming town that has since vanished off the map. (One of the Tolan men married a woman who was listed as Indian in the 1910 census, but as black in subsequent censuses.) It wasn't one of the all-black towns, or at least it wasn't listed among listings I can find, and there were a couple of white people who lived in the census district, whether or not they were "officially" part of the town. If you want more information about these towns, check out http://www.okhistory.org/historycenter/blacktowns/mainmenu.php. Thanks to the Fresh Out of Tokens podcast and their guest Johnnie Jae of A Tribe Called Geek (https://freshoutoftokens.simplecast.fm/56) for reminding me about the existence of these towns.


End file.
